Ethics Newsline®

The other day my wife got a new driver’s license at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles office in Rockland, Maine.

“Did anyone shake you down for a bribe?” I asked when she returned home.

She looked incredulous. “Of course not. They were the nicest people in the world.”

We both knew my question was silly — as it would be pretty much anywhere in the United States. What would cause incredulity would be the reverse. Suppose a state official were to stonewall, wink and nod, shift from foot from foot, and wait for money to change hands before going forward with our licensing paperwork. Citizens in most U.S. states would find that scandalous, outrageous, and intolerable.

Why should that be so? Why, when citizens in so many other countries regularly slip a few bills across the table to get phone lines installed or garbage hauled away, is it not that way here? How does a nation manage to create — at least in this small but crucial corner of state activity — a bureaucratic standard of integrity in the face of one of the most pervasive human lusts?

The answer is important. Public corruption may well be the most expensive, demeaning, and undemocratic tendency in the world today. Its presence, and the public desire to resist it, generate powerful political swirls. Last week’s surprising election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran (which may well complicate negotiations with the West over nuclear power) reached landslide proportions in part because he vowed to fight corruption. Next door in Iraq, the Commission on Public Integrity last week issued its first report on investigations into the misuse of some of the billions of dollars of reconstruction and training money that have poured into Iraq since 2003. Speaking in Brussels, the deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Hussain al-Shahristani, said that corruption had reached “disastrous proportions,” causing some countries to question the sending of financial aid.

Yet here in Maine, the good folks at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles wouldn’t think of asking for bribes. Why not? The answer lies in something beyond those particular folks themselves. It’s not simply that this year’s employees happen to have exceptional standards of personal morality. Nor is it that the current commissioner, or this legislature, or this sitting governor are paragons of unparalleled probity. Nor is it that the police, the courts, and the media are so bearish about bureaucratic graft that nobody dares take bribes. Nor is it that the public is especially incensed about this issue. I would go so far as to hazard that you, reader, have probably never asked yourself, “I wonder why they don’t shake me down at license-renewal time?”

The answer has to do not simply with the people but with the culture. What we’ve somehow managed to create — at least at the Maine Bureau — is an ethical culture that won’t countenance corruption. If culture means the way we do things around here, then the question is, Who is we? Clearly it’s more than simply those who happen to work for or interface with the Bureau in the summer of 2005. The culture reflects years of legislation, policy-making, employment standards and practices, and enforcement mechanisms that have created the Bureau’s traditions. This culture is larger than any individual or group and it has immense power to shape the present and future.

In this case, that shaping is for the good. But what do we do when the culture is corrupt — when all the traditions of an agency or a country suggest that graft is good and sleaze is as natural as sneezing? What are the most effective anti-corruption tools?

One is to address the tone at the top — to put in place leaders who make it clear that corruption won’t be tolerated. Another is housecleaning, ridding the organization of the bribe-masters. Still another is sound hiring practices, ferreting out potential employees who lost their moral compasses somewhere along the way. Yet another is a training program that raises awareness of corruption, creates channels for reporting, and provides decision-making skills to help employees resist the pressures to solicit bribes.

But while all of that is necessary, it’s not sufficient. If the focus is only on current employees, what’s to keep the organization from slipping backwards once they retire or move on? Needed, in addition, is attention to the culture itself, the complex mix of attitudes, values, and traditions that make up the accumulated wisdom of the place. In the end, corruption is not about just money. It’s about selfishness, lack of respect for others, and a cynical disregard for justice, fairness, and honesty.

Fighting those things isn’t easy, and it takes time. But unless anti-corruption tools include a focus on the broad ethical values that counteract selfishness and cynicism, they won’t get to the heart of the long-term culture. Get those values in place, and employees who might in other contexts be tempted to seek bribes can find themselves working in a culture free of extortion. Incidentally they also may be, as my wife said, “the nicest people in the world.”

©2005 Institute for Global Ethics

“We think that most Americans, especially people of faith, are ready to hear from Christians who are tolerant and who understand the many ways that our faiths impact our views of public life.”

– Rev. Timothy Simpson, director of religious affairs at the Christian Alliance for Progress, a new movement that aims to provide a progressive counterpoint to religious debates in the United States. “We are here because the language spoken by the religious right is Christian — this requires a uniquely Christian response,” Alliance founder Patrick Mrotek told the Agence France-Presse. (“Christians Take on Might of U.S. Religious Right,” AFP, June 22)

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled that a Connecticut city can seize and destroy private homes and businesses in order to make way for a privately operated waterfront complex designed to reinvigorate the local economy.

The ruling ends an effort by nine landowners who refused to sell their properties so the massive complex could be built aside a new $300 million research facility owned by the Pfizer pharmaceutical company.

New London, Connecticut, argued that seizing the homes was for the public good, citing plans for a waterfront hotel, conference center, stores, restaurants, new homes, stores, and office space.

New London invoked the constitutional right of eminent domain to take the property of about 115 residents and property owners, but ended up locked in a legal battle with nine who refused to sell.

The holdout homeowners argued that the Constitution does not allow the government to seize their private property and transfer it to another private party, as in this case. Nor, they argued, was this “public use” a legitimate certainty, but rather a speculative real-estate venture that could fail, reported the Washington Post.

By a 5-to-4 vote, a sharply divided Supreme Court rejected the landowners’ right to retain their property, saying the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment allows local governments to define “public use” as they see fit, seizing properties as they deem necessary.

New London “has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. “Because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment.”

Wesley Horton, the attorney who argued the case for the city, welcomed the court’s decision, saying, “The Supreme court has basically given a road map for cities that want to do something about their economic problems.”

In a sharp dissent, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor lashed out at the majority’s reasoning, warning that it eviscerates the intent of the Constitution’s eminent domain clause.

“Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded — i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public — in the process,” O’Connor wrote.

“The specter of condemnation hangs over all property,” she added. “Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”

“The fallout from this decision will not be random,” she warned. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”

CHICAGO
Hoping public humiliation will be a powerful incentive to improve behavior, a growing number of U.S. cities and states are adopting a “name and shame” strategy to curb practices deemed unacceptable. Among the developments:

• Chicago last week began posting online the names, pictures, and partial addresses of people arrested for soliciting prostitutes. While the crime already carries a fine of about $1,000, the city hopes that humiliating “johns” online will provide a virtual cold shower for other would-be payees.

• The Associated Press last week reported on similar efforts involving people convicted of driving while intoxicated (DWI). Ohio already makes convicted drivers use bright orange identifying plates, while Iowa uses special plate authorizing police to pull over drivers without further cause.

• Also last week, USA Today checked in on states’ efforts to name and shame companies whose employees end up relying on public money for health insurance.

NEW YORK
John Rigas, the 80-year-old founder of Aldephia Communications Corp., was sentenced last week to 15 years in prison for looting hundreds of millions of dollars from the company and concealing over $2.3 billion in debt, which propelled the nation’s sixth largest cable company into bankruptcy.

Blaming Rigas for “one of the largest frauds in corporate history,” U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand declared he would have inflicted a much harsher penalty except for Rigas’s age and poor health.

Sand also sentenced 49-year-old Timothy Rigas, John Rigas’s son and Aldelphia’s former chief financial officer, to 20 years for his role in bilking the company.

The Rigases received two of the harshest sentences imposed by any U.S. court since the 2001 Enron scandal catalyzed a series of prosecutions of white-collar CEOs for corporate wrongdoing, according to the Associated Press.

Requesting leniency, the younger Rigas said, “Our intentions were good; the results were not so.” Judge Sand retorted, “I think your intentions were to deceive the market,” reported the New York Times.

WASHINGTON
Struggling to meet recruiting goals, the Defense Department is turning to the private sector for help, paying a direct marketing firm to compile a massive database on teenagers and college students who would be targets for recruitment.

While the government already gathers students’ names and addresses from school records, the new effort goes much broader, adding Social Security numbers, email addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity, and what subjects the students are studying.

The database will be handled by Massachusetts-based BeNow, Inc., and will target all high-schoolers ages 16 to 18 and all college students, reported the Washington Post.

Privacy advocates last week raised questions about the database, saying it appeared to be designed to help the government get around privacy laws by paying private firms to do what it legally cannot, noted the Post.

“We support the U.S. armed forces and understand that [the Department of Defense] faces serious challenges in recruiting for the military,” said a coalition of privacy groups in a letter to the Pentagon. But “the collection of this information is not consistent with the Privacy Act, which was passed by Congress to reduce the government’s collection of personal information on Americans.”

The groups question the need for gathering information on ethnicity and Social Security numbers, saying the government is creating an unnecessarily intrusive and massive target for data raiders.

The Pentagon last week said the new database “is another tool for recruiters to use to find candidates for military service,” noting that its targets can “opt out” of the system by providing detailed information that will put their names entered in a “suppression file.”

WASHINGTON
The Pentagon last week defended its practice of having medical doctors step away from their “do no harm” oath to serve as consultants helping interrogators increase stress and duress on detainees at the Guantánamo detention camp.

While the Hippocratic oath along with ethics guidelines forbid doctors from harming their patients, the doctors at Guantánamo were serving as oath-free consultants, Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, suggested to the New York Times.

While health care workers at the facility are responsible for “humane treatment of detainees,” some medical professionals “may have other roles,” Whitman said.

The Pentagon’s use of medical personnel to manipulate detainees into turning over information has raised questions about medical ethics in the “war on terror.”

Last week, the Times and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) separately examined the practice, reporting on interviews with military personnel, including interrogators from Guantánamo.

“Since late 2002, psychiatrists and psychologists have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress, combined with behavior-shaping rewards, to extract actionable intelligence,” the NEJM reported in an article co-authored by Georgetown University Law School professor Dr. M. Gregg Bloche.

Bloche told the Times that such involvement crosses the line into abusive, unethical, and possibly illegal behavior.

Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and former Army brigadier general in the medical corps, agreed, telling the Times that such “behavior is not consistent with our medical responsibility or any of the codes that guide our conduct as doctors.”

Former interrogators have told the Times that mental health professionals gave explicit instructions on how to increase stress levels, including exploiting specific phobias held by prisoners.

Dr. William Winkenwerder, Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health matters at the Pentagon, dismissed Bloche’s conclusions as “outrageous.”

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

TORONTO
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is reporting that some Canadian doctors are quietly stockpiling antiviral flu drugs in anticipation of a major global flu pandemic that may claim millions of lives around the world.

A CBC reporter found a dozen physicians who, off the record, admitted that they are writing prescriptions for the drug in order to stockpile it for their families.

Physicians and other health care workers would automatically receive the first doses of the medicines, but their families would not be included in the first wave of drug distribution.

Pharmaceutical companies that license some of the antiviral drugs in Canada also have pointed out that in the first wave of a pandemic, there probably will not be enough vaccine to protect all Canadians.

Some medical experts are questioning the ethics of the stockpiling of antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Oseltamivir, which are considered the most effective to prevent and treat avian flu, which is spreading across some Asian countries and could turn into a global pandemic.

The CBC is reporting that Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto’s Mount Sinai, has argued that the federal government should be providing the drugs for every Canadian in anticipation of “two waves” of a possible global pandemic.

However, Dr. McGeer and other experts say they understand why some doctors would be developing a personal stockpile for their own families.

WASHINGTON
An internal review of religion-related behavior at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs has found that while some authorities have crossed the line, there does not appear to be a deliberate pattern of discrimination against non-evangelical Christian cadets.

The Air Force’s 40-page report comes after rising complaints about on-campus proselytizing. A 16-member group spent a few days in early May interviewing more than 300 cadets.

Last week, the group’s report concluded that while cadets perceive an official religious bias, most of the wrongdoing was the fault of a handful of overzealous officials who felt they were doing trainees a service by pushing religion.

“Some faculty members and coaches consider it their duty to profess their faith and discuss this issue in their classrooms in furtherance of developing cadets’ spirituality,” noted the report by Air Force Lt. Gen. Roger Brady.

Brady, who led the review, said that his group was tasked with taking the pulse of the place, not investigating alleged abuses. He told the New York Times that seven cases of questionable behavior had been referred to the Air Force for further investigation.

U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, last week said that while the report was a positive step, it lacked external rigor.

“Is it a whitewash? No. But it does resemble milquetoast,” Israel complained, calling on President Bush to create a commission on religion in the military.

HOUSTON
Making good on a longtime promise to help black children get an education, a man renowned for frugality surprised survivors by leaving more than $2 million to his alma mater, a historically black university in Texas.

Whitlowe Green, who graduated from Prairie View A&M University in 1936, left the university about $2.1 million in his will, the largest gift from a single donor in the school’s history, reported the Houston Chronicle.

Green was a longtime economics teacher who retired from the Houston Independent School District in 1983, having earned a reputation as a brutally frugal man and well-respected teacher. He was known for wearing second-hand clothes and buying expired meat at a discount.

“Now it’s funny, but years ago you would sometimes get annoyed,” his cousin, Sharon Green Mitchell, told the Chronicle, explaining how he would split the gas bill for road trips among the adults in the car.

“He sacrificed for this,” she added. “I remember him saying, ‘I’m going to help black children get an education.’ He did it.”

Green’s bequest will be used to establish scholarships at Prairie View A&M, the first of which will be awarded for this coming fall.

“We are just excited about the potential this standard sets for giving back,” said Monica Williams, the school’s director of development. “Prairie View has a long history in struggle, survival, and progress. This speaks volumes to what an alumnus can do.”

From the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:

“With an aging Supreme Court possibly facing major changes, the court’s public image has eroded significantly. Currently, 57 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court, with 30 percent expressing an unfavorable view. In the past, favorable views of the court typically surpassed 70 percent; even in January 2001, shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling deciding the contentious presidential election, 68 percent expressed a positive opinion of the court.

“Two very different factors are contributing to the court’s lower standing with the public. Democrats turned more negative toward the Supreme Court in the wake of its controversial decision in Bush v. Gore. Positive opinions of the court among Democrats fell from 78 percent in May 1997 to 61 percent in January 2001. Democratic support for the court has continued to ebb, and now stands at 51 percent.

“But much of the recent decline in positive views of the court has come among conservative Republicans. Favorable opinions of the Supreme Court among both conservative Republicans and white evangelical Protestants have declined by about 20 points since January 2001. An analysis of the poll finds that Republicans who want the court to take a tougher stand against abortion rights are more dissatisfied with the court than Republicans who do not….

“Overall, 47 percent of the public says the selection of the next Supreme Court justice is very important to them personally, up from 38 percent in March. But at this point, the issue is mainly of interest to the extreme wings of each political party. Fully six-in-ten conservative Republicans (61 percent), and the same number of liberal Democrats, attach great importance to the selection of the next nominee. That compares with just four-in-ten conservative and moderate Democrats, and about the same number of moderate and liberal Republicans (38 percent).

“On what is likely to be a pivotal issue in a Supreme Court nomination battle -¡ abortion rights -¡ the public continues to strongly oppose the complete overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision. By 63 percent-30 percent, the public rejects the idea of completely overturning the 1973 decision establishing a woman’s right to abortion. That margin has remained stable for more than a decade.

“In many ways, the political divide over that landmark court decision reflects the battle lines over the court’s future. Solid majorities in most demographic groups oppose completely overturning the Roe v. Wade decision, but opposition is greatest among liberal Democrats (82 percent) and seculars (82 percent).

“Conservative Republicans are by far the most supportive of overturning the Roe v. Wade decision (62 percent). This represents a deep division within the Republican base, as Republicans who describe themselves as moderate or liberal favor maintaining Roe v. Wade by a 71 percent to 25 percent margin. The only other major group in which a majority favors completely overturning Roe v. Wade is white evangelical Protestants (52 percent).

“Dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court among Republicans is closely tied to views about Roe v. Wade. The roughly half of Republicans who would like to see the abortion decision overturned are twice as likely as their counterparts who support the status quo to give the Court an unfavorable rating (33 percent vs. 16 percent)….

“Fully three-quarters of Republican opponents of the Roe decision (76 percent) want Bush to appoint a justice who will make the court more conservative, compared with just 33 percent of Republican supporters of Roe….

“The new Pew survey finds further evidence of public dissatisfaction with Congress. About half of Americans (49 percent) express a favorable opinion of Congress, a decline from 56 percent a year ago and the lowest mark since the 1999 impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton (48 percent in January 1999).

“Views of Congress remain partisan, but the decline in congressional favorability has come among members of both parties. The shift has been greatest among those at either end of the political spectrum. Just three-in-ten liberal Democrats (31 percent) have a positive view of Congress, down from 53 percent last June. Conservative Republicans also are less happy with Congress; 58 percent have a favorable opinion of Congress, compared with 70 percent a year ago.

“Positive opinions of the Republican Party have slipped since the end of last year. Currently, 48 percent have a favorable opinion of the GOP, with 44 percent unfavorable. In December 2004, positive opinions of the Republican Party outnumbered negative ones by 52 percent-42 percent. Over the same period, ratings for the Democratic Party have been stable (53 percent then/52 percent now)….”

“The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Life is growth and motion; a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.”

– Brooks Atkinson (U.S. journalist and drama critic, 1894-1984)

The question is not, Who is Michael Jackson? The question is, Who are we?

The surprising thing about the 20-month extravaganza that ended last week with the pop star’s acquittal is how little it tells us about Michael Jackson. The discomforting thing is how much our fascination with this spectacle tells us about ourselves — our mindset, our media, our priorities. Mr. Jackson is now free to pick up the pieces, but we’re left grappling with questions as old as America: Who are these Americans, and what is it that most interests them?

Let’s start by laying to rest the notion that this mega-story, into which the media invested millions of dollars and viewers poured billions of hours, was an issue of deep importance. It wasn’t. If the issue is pedophilia and predatory sexuality in the twenty-first century, the important legal cases will focus on the Catholic church, not on a California celebrity whose quirky lifestyle provides little useful judicial precedent.

If the issue is Mr. Jackson’s identity, that’s hardly been clarified. Despite months of scrutiny, he remains an enigmatic curiosity who admits to living in a fantasy world of his own making.

If the issue is the role of celebrity in an age of instant communication, there’s little here to study. The fairest and best legal system treats everyone as equal before the law, overlooking celebrity rather than paying attention to it — a point enforced by Judge Rodney Melville when he banned cameras from the courtroom.

And if the issue is the media itself, remember the adage that a citizenry gets the media it deserves. Editors can count on five things to make grabber headlines: violence, sex, wealth, fame, and power. The O. J. Simpson story contained all five. The Michael Jackson story lacks only violence to be in that category. Blaming the editors, however, is too glib. They’re essentially responding to our tastes, desires, and interests. Unless we change, why should the media change?

We’re left, then, with some sobering questions. When the editors called, why did we answer? Is it that we imagined the story to be important? That’s a stretch. It’s hard to argue that pop music, or Hollywood, or the United States, or the world would be substantially changed by this trial.

So was it that we knew the story to be insubstantial, but nevertheless expended one of our most valuable assets — our attention — to follow its twists and turns? That, too, seems a poor explanation: Given the much-discussed pressure of time and shortness of attention spans, it seems odd that we should knowingly squander such a resource.

Then was it that we were ignorant of the issues truly deserving attention in the world today — terrorism, nuclear proliferation, AIDS, environmental degradation, global economic disparities, and of course the war in Iraq? There may be some who, in the words of the old Simon and Garfunkel song, “get all the news [they] need from the weather report” — or from the supermarket tabloids. But a twenty-first-century American would have to live in a fantasy world paralleling Michael Jackson’s to be unaware that these issues, if unaddressed, could have dire consequences.

But maybe that very direness holds the clue to our fascination. Is it that, at bottom, this story lets us escape from the hairier issues? Is it somehow comforting to turn on the news and find nothing more dangerous than Michael Jackson? The United States, after all, created the most powerful global fantasy-maker in the world when it invented Hollywood. And Americans have called upon it during moments of national crisis to provide a kind of Neverland alternative to the grim reality of the news. So are we peculiarly prone to these flights of fantasy — just when we should be focusing on the serious issues at hand? Is this desire to seek refuge in escapism a key facet of the U.S. mind?

And does that, finally, explain the importance of Michael Jackson — more as a symbol than a personality? If his trial has a lesson, it is to remind us that we’re all at risk of building Neverlands of the mind and escaping into them when the ambiguities become overbearing. It reminds us of the need to find within ourselves the moral resources to address confusion, master complexity, and come through it into clarity. It reminds us that we earn our way to simplicity, not through avoidance but through engagement. Of such is real morality built.

©2005 Institute for Global Ethics

“This verdict is an endorsement of the principle of equal justice under the law. Crimes committed in corporate offices will be treated according to the same standards as other crimes.”

– Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau commenting last week on the conviction of former Tyco chief executive Dennis Kozlowski and finance chief Mark Swartz on 22 counts of grand larceny, conspiracy, fraud, and falsifying business records. The men each face up to 30 years in prison for stealing more than $150 million from Tyco, using the funds in part to finance lavish lifestyles that included a $6,000 shower curtain and a $2 million birthday party in the Mediterranean. The men are expected to appeal. (“Former Tyco Chiefs Kozlowski, Swartz Found Guilty,” Reuters, June 17)

WASHINGTON
After building a felony case against accounting firm KPMG, federal prosecutors now are debating whether to actually take the firm to court, worried about destroying another major auditor Arthur Andersen-style.

Andersen collapsed in 2002 under the weight of its Enron-related conviction for obstruction of justice, winnowing the Big Five down to the Big Four, which includes KPMG.

Federal regulators began pursuing the Big Four for concocting tax shelters that helped wealthy clients evade warranted taxes, cheating the U.S. government and fellow taxpayers out of billions of dollars.

Big Four firms Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers resolved their cases with the Internal Revenue Service with fines and settlements. Now the Justice Department is deciding whether to take a similar tack with KPMG.

The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Justice regulators have built a criminal case against KPMG, but are worried about weeding out one of the last remaining major auditing firms. A felony conviction would force KPMG to surrender its accounting license, noted the Associated Press.

KPMG last week admitted that some of its executives participated in unlawful conduct from 1996 through 2002, but insisted that it has fired the bad apples and mended its ways, adopting a series of reforms to bolster ethics.

“KPMG takes full responsibility for the unlawful conduct by former KPMG partners during that period, and we deeply regret that it occurred,” the firm said in a statement.

Analysts, including Robert Willens of Lehman Brothers, last week expressed doubt that the Justice Department will try to indict KPMG.

“Not because they don’t think they might be indictable, but because it just doesn’t make sense to do that to KPMG’s clients and to narrow the choices for corporate America down to three major firms,” Willens told the Reuters news agency.

Columbia University law professor John Coffee agreed, noting that KPMG may even be feeling emboldened by its position as one of the surviving Big Four. “It’s a strange kind of immunity,” he told the AP.

NEW YORK
Financial services firm JPMorgan Chase last week agreed to pay $2.2 billion to extricate itself from a class-action lawsuit filed by investors left empty-handed when Enron went bankrupt in 2001.

The JPMorgan Chase deal piggybacks on last week’s settlement by Citigroup, which agreed to pay $2 billion to settle class-action claims that the firms helped prop up Enron despite deeply flawed internal practices.

“Our litigation strategy is to seek escalating settlements from defendants as we went down the road,” lead plaintiff’s lawyer William Lerach said last week. “This result was consistent with that.”

Firms still facing prosecution include Barclays, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Canada, and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Lerach said he expects the final settlement pool to exceed $6 billion, allowing jilted shareholders to recover “more than 90 percent” of their losses — with plenty left over for lawyers’ fees, noted USA Today.

“When we are done here this will be the largest recovery, in absolute dollar terms, ever for victims of securities fraud, and it will represent a significant recovery of their potential losses,” Lerach said.

SEATTLE
Microsoft Corp. last week defended its decision to cooperate with Chinese authorities in censoring users of the company’s free blog service, blocking the use of words including “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights.”

Other terms banned from Microsoft’s Chinese blog area include “China Democracy Party,” “Dalai Lama,” “demonstration,” “Taiwan independence,” and “Tiananmen,” according to press reports.

Users trying to title their entries with such terms receive a free speech slap-down: “This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them.”

Similar censorship moves have been taken by search engine giants Google and Yahoo!, who, like Microsoft, have moved to take advantage of China’s booming Internet base — expected to hit 100 million users this year — according to the Guardian.

The U.S. firms have been criticized by Reporters Without Borders for abandoning free speech principles in order to increase their profits.

Asked about its decision to censor content, Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn said it was a business calculation that did not necessarily negate the company’s positive impact.

“Even with the filters, we’re helping millions of people communicate, share stories, share photographs, and build relationships. For us, that is the key point here,” Sohn told the AP.

BUENOS AIRES
Argentina’s Supreme Court last week rejected as unconstitutional two amnesty laws protecting military and police officers from prosecution for the alleged murder and torture of tens of thousands of people during the country’s Dirty War.

The Dirty War ran from 1976 until 1983, during which a military junta used the country’s forces to quash protest and dissent by killing and “disappearing” between 10,000 and 30,000 people.

After the country returned to democracy, prosecutors began filing charges and winning cases against officials and low-level officers involved in the crimes, sparking two mutinies from the military.

Under pressure, former president Carlos Menem pushed through two amnesty laws aimed at what he called “national reconciliation,” angering and frustrating the families of those who disappeared, reported the Reuters news agency.

Last week, the Supreme Court, with new members appointed by President Nestor Kirchner, who was himself detained by the military as a student, ruled 7-to-1 that those two laws were unconstitutional.

Kirchner last week welcomed the decision, saying the judges “have given our country a ruling that renews our faith in the system of justice.”

The ruling clears the way for reviving hundreds of mothballed cases against military leaders and underlings as well as allowing new charges to filed against as many as 400 officers, reported the Associated Press.